These Reporters Won't Let Kashmir's Internet Blackout Stop Them
Posted
October 25, 2019
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October 25, 2019
64,519
1,256
890
3.33%
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5:08Now PlayingFor the past two months, a government-imposed communications blackout has largely prevented journalists from calling sources, emailing editors, and doing basic fact-checks.
Forget about actually posting a story on the internet.
The only way to get online is at a government media center, where there are nine computers for hundreds of reporters.
Against these odds, Fahad Shah, editor in chief of weekly newsmagazine “The Kashmir Walla,” has uncovered new truths: that children aren’t going to school, that the fire department isn’t working properly, and that a 14-year-old boy was arrested at his home late at night.
But because he can’t contact the distributors who deliver the paper to shops across the valley, Shah is only printing about a quarter of what he used to and doesn’t know if anyone is reading his stories.
The blackout was imposed shortly after India’s ruling Hindu Nationalist party’s Aug. 5 revocation of the special autonomy given to India’s only Muslim majority state.
Fearing a backlash in Kashmir, which has been home to a separatist movement and Pakistani-backed insurgency for three decades, authorities shut off Internet and phone services to the nearly seven million residents of the valley.
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